Sometimes a blog post doesn’t need too many words. 14 years without making the playoffs. We finally did it. Yeah we’ll probably get swept by the Rockets. Who cares? I feel like that 105 year old man they show on TV when a team’s about to win a championship. “He sat through it all!”

I’ve been a fan of the Minnesota Timberwolves since 2002. I saw some good years, then sat through a decade and a half of BDSM with all of the bleeding and none of the enjoyment. I went to games that were so sparsely attended that even though I bought upper bowl tickets, I sat in the third row courtside and nobody stopped me. Hell, I could have played and nobody would have cared. I slogged through Rambis, Kahn, Darko, knuckle push-ups and the Cream Team. Still year in and year out I come back to this team, because I gave my heart to them. I even made a video where I couldn’t burn Kevin Love’s jersey because I loved the Pups too much.

But after last night, I will only put in as much effort as the Timberwolves do. And that currently is zero. Players and coaches change over the years, but the one thing that remains constant is the fans. And the Timberwolves fans deserve better than this. My 98 year old grandma would have tried harder and she’s not alive.

Many of you know that February 8 is the NBA trade deadline. What many of you DON’T know is that February 8 is also National Iowa Day. As the fourth most famous Iowan (after Ashton Kutcher, Tom Arnold, Slipknot and tied with Bix Beiderbecke), I feel like this gives me credible authority from up high to submit my trade deadline directly to Tom Thibodeau and staff.

My requests/demands are as follows:

Shabazz Muhammad & Cole Aldrich for Avery Bradley

According to ESPN’s NBA Trade Machine, this trade works out salary-wise. We would get someone who could be a much needed “3&D” player, but we would lose our favorite scapegoat and a human hockey puck. It would really be a homerun for us, but why in the world would Detroit make that trade? We’d have to convince them that Shabazz is the next Boris Diaw and that Aldrich would be perfect as the next Robocop. I have begun the campaign:

RoboCole

Gorgui Dieng and the Thunder 1st round pick for Nikola Mirotic

I stole this trade idea from Dunking With Wolves because I’m bad at math and lazy, but it would make sense. We are blood brothers with the Chicago Bulls and this trade would take them one step closer to being the 2016-17 Timberwolves. I would honestly miss Gorgui’s wonderfully reliable 800 foot 2-pointers and the way he runs like someone is giving him a colonoscopy, but we would be getting our first player since Nikola Pekovic who looks like he’s cut off someone’s finger to gain fingerprint code access. (NOTE: I just realized that, like Pekovic, Mirotic is from Montenegro. What is it with that place and Bond Villains? I’m positive both of them have dangled someone over an acid pit. Although Pek would be the goon holding them and Mirotic would be in the suit twiddling his fingers and making a speech about Chaucer.)

“You should have seen the sly col-fox, waiting in the bed of wortes. Lower him, my Pek.”

Aaron Brooks for an broken soda machine

It’s an even trade, because like an old soda machine, Aaron Brooks used to work but now only gives out Diet Mountain Dew.

Tyus Jones for Tyler Jones

We all love home-town hero Tyus Jones, but Tyler is so much younger than him. If this trade doesn’t work out, we can always explore a Karl-Anthony Towns/Burl-Michaely Towns swap or even a Nemanja Bjelica/Jumanji Pizza deal.

Next up we play the Hawks in Atlanta. Crappy Eastern Conference team…worst record in the league…on the road…uh oh. We will definitely start with a 40 point lead and lose by 15.

Maybe it’s because we have a town named Odin? Maybe he hates the Mall Of America because having four magnet stores is the modern day Tower of Babel? Maybe he thinks Atmosphere is wack? All I know is that the Minnesota Timberwolves are 27-16 right now and we can’t jinx this shit by acting like we’re all fancy pants.

Whenever a Minnesotan thinks we’re doing all right, we get the rug pulled out from under us. Think 2004 Wolves, think 2016 Vikings, think season 2 of the TV show “Vikings”, think Prince after the Batman soundtrack because fight me that shit was awesome, think me in yoga class when I finally got crow pose and then fell on my face and possibly farted. We haven’t had this good of a record since I had hair and I’ve been bald for a really long time. If we screw this season up I’m gonna lose my eyebrows from stress and then how am I supposed to act surprised when Shabazz Muhammad passes the ball?

So I’m gonna take one for the team. Literally.

We suck.

We deserve to lose and surely this is not reverse psychology towards God and the universe. Jimmy Butler? Dude’s horrible. We’d be better off with that Finnish guy who looks like Screech. Karl-Anthony Towns plays Twitch so much because he’s trying to drown out the voices that tell him to strangle baby ducks. Andrew Wiggins is the Defensive Player Of The Year (<— reverse psychology inside of reverse psychology, bitches!) and has a really gross smile. Taj Gibson is LAZY. Tyus Jones is actually from Des Moines. Jamal Crawford is afraid to shoot because all of his tattoos are fake and they might smudge off when he moves. Jeff Teague voted for Trump. Gorgui Dieng’s arms are physically incapable of leaving his hips while running (this one’s actually true). Marcus Georges-Hunt hates “Gorgeous Gorgui” because he thinks HIS nickname should be “Gorgeous Georges”, which does make more sense phonetically, but SCREW THAT LOCKER ROOM POISONER! Belly doesn’t shovel his sidewalk in the winter and just puts down salt that hurts your dogs. Cole Aldrich hates “Mighty Ducks”. Aaron Brooks puts “Smooth Move” herbal laxative tea in Shabazz Muhammad’s Gatorade and it doesn’t matter because Shabazz plays three minutes a game. Justin Patton and Anthony Brown are conspiracy theories made up by Kyrie Irving. Tom Thibodeau is just a tree stump that someone drew a face on. And all Timberwolves fans think Nikola Jokic is better than Towns, miss David Kahn and Kurt Rambis dearly and can’t wait until the most exciting thing at the Target Center is the Cherry Berry give-away again.

Phew.

You’re welcome.

Up next we play the Knicks in Minneapolis, where we’ll surely lose because we really screwed up by getting rid of Michael Beasley.

In case you didn’t know, the Los Angeles Lakers used to be the Minneapolis Lakers. Granted, this was back when it was almost all whites dudes and people still played with peach baskets and medicine balls. Shoes were worn on the court solely because exposed toes were considered too sexual. A highlight reel consisted of George Mikan scoring eight million points without ever leaving his feet. BECAUSE HE DIDN’T WANT TO.

Remember when all the kids wore their flat-footed “Vern Mikkelson” Converses? From NBAhoops.com

Still, that team belonged to us. We won five of the Lakers 16 championships in Minneapolis. You know, the land of LAKES. And then the team left. I honestly don’t know the full story because I didn’t have time to read the telegrams, but I understand it wasn’t exactly acrimonious. Think of how Seattle feels about Oklahoma City now, except with the NBA fanship roughly the size of curling.

Flash forward past civil rights and the discovery that smoking is bad during halftime to last night. The L.A. Lakers were in town to play the Minnesota Timberwolves and these SUMSOFBITCHES wore their throw-back “MPLS. Lakers” jerseys. That’s like if Seattle actually did get a team again and OKC showed up wearing a Shawn Kemp style “Supersonics” jersey to rub it in. Or if the New Orleans Pelicans played the Charlotte Hornets and wore their retro jerseys as the New Orleans Hornets, even though technically they aren’t considered a part of that franchise anymore even though they drafted people as Hornets that ended up as Pelicans. No, wait. I’m confused. THE POINT IS, IT WAS SHITTY and there are only one of two explanations for the Lakers’ rationale in doing so:

They are so egocentric as a team that they thought they were honoring us by wearing the name of our city in OUR HOUSE, even though it was ripped from our hands back when people ate lead for fun.

It was a direct “F-You!” to Timberwolves fans.

Being a Minnesotan with a passive-aggressive inferiority complex, I’m going with #2. So “F-You!” back, L.A. You have 11 championships. Those other five were won in a rollerskating rink in Minnesota when there were three teams in the league. The finals were decided by a coin toss and you don’t get to claim them unless you are intimately familiar with Hubert Humphrey or at the very least Louie Anderson.

My how the roles have flipped. Minnesota is looking like a #4 seed and the Lakers are a place that Dwight Howard’s sad sack doesn’t even want to go to, so you definitely ain’t getting LeBron. The only new big name you guys are getting is Jack Nicholson’s gastroenterologist. So suck it, Los Angeles. You snowbirds couldn’t take the cold anyway.

Next up we play the Nets in Brooklyn, a team that will never ever attempt to wear a throw-back jersey:

I literally say this every year, but WE ARE GOING TO BE AWESOME THIS YEAR! Every time I’ve said that in the past has been a bullshit lie and I knew it. I mean, yes, I believed it at the time. Yet, deep down I knew we would never win with Alexey Shved at anything other than a “Saddest Russian” contest? Every year leading up to this I’ve just been trying to justify spending large portions of my adult life staking my happiness on 12 random men who aren’t even really from Minnesota mostly (‘sup, Tyus).

But this year is different. This year, we might actually play an NBA game in May. Has there been a Timberwolves game played in warm weather since Kanye West’s first album? Dude’s like 40 now. 90% of the league doesn’t even know we can grow deciduous trees. Anyway, we had a SUPER busy off-season and I will now grade each major move we made one by one, because I am a super qualified judge of basketball:

Minnesota trades Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn and the #7 pick to the Chicago Bulls for Jimmy Butler and the #16 pick.

A+

Zach LaVine is a slam-dunk champion who just wrecked his ACL. That’s like a masseuse whose arms fell off. Nobody wants a hook massage. Kris Dunn is horrible. Every single YouTube clip of him “breaking ankles” ends before the shot nears the rim because he shot like 2.5% from the field. I think Kris Dunn is actually a Lacrosse player who accidentally walked into the NBA draft and they picked him anyway. And the #7 pick ended up being some Finnish dude who I know next to nothing about but the Bulls chose him, so he surely sucks. We fleeced these bitches!

I made up a grade lower than F because I’m so upset. I had to take my signed, framed Ricky Rubio photo out of my office and put it in the basement earlier this summer. I knew he was going to get traded and I had to start mentally distancing myself. I’ll never change this face, Ricky! I would have “Thelma & Louise”ed right off this cliff with you!

Listen, anything that gets rid of Adreian Payne is an A+. Drop Payne, Jimmy Butler and move the team to Belarus? A+! Not only does he look 45 at 25 somehow, but his ridiculously spelled first name has way too many vowels in it. It’s like his mom was playing Scrabble when he was born and the doctor knocked the board over and she just went with it. Oh, and he sucks.

Minnesota signs Taj Gibson

B+

I like Taj. Yeah, he’s kind of past his prime and a little expensive, but so is HBO and that shit is good for at least three months out of the year.

Minnesota signs Jeff Teague

No grade

I will not acknowledge Jeff Teague as a human being until he apologies for breathing the air that Ricky would be breathing if he were here.

Minnesota signs Jamal Crawford

B-

Fuck it, why not? He’s super old and kind of like clicking on the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google. What’s the worst that can happen? (Do NOT say Brandon Roy, Kevin Garnett 2.0 or Sam Cassell after the big nuts dance tore his hamstring.)

Minnesota signs Shabazz Muhammad for peanuts after he turned down a $44 million contract with us earlier in the summer.

A+

One time I got addicted to Ebay and bought an Ullr (the Nordic god of skiing and archery) pendant for $250 after getting into a bidding war with what in retrospect was surely someone in cahoots with the owner. A year later I sold it on Ebay for $5. This is how Shabazz must feel.

Minnesota signs Albert Brooks for an undisclosed amount of money. (It’s actually Aaron Brooks, but I accidentally typed Albert Brooks and I loved him in “Finding Dory” so I’m keeping it.)

I’ve been freaking out in excitement about the new Timberwolves logo for a while now. This was our chance to really rebrand ourselves as a cool franchise, which isn’t easy for a team whose solution to a decade long playoff drought was signing a team full of white dudes with dad bods. So after a year or more of waiting, the logo that will define us for potentially decades to come is here. And after all the build-up and tension and anticipation it is…fine.

It’s just fine.

Like, nobody’s mad. But nobody’s happy. We are the Foo Fighters of basketball teams. Just pleasantly middle of the road. Why swing for the fences when you can just redo the alternate logo and hope that nobody notices? If the new jerseys end up being those cursed Muskies ones from the team nobody actually remembers I’m going to be pissed.

Let’s talk about the pros & cons of the logo:

PROS

The A is stylized to look like a Nordic rune, which will certainly help us sign every Icelandic free agent on the market this summer. Let’s hope Bjork can ball.

Police blue will probably keep JR Rider away.

The wolf’s eyes make it look like it’s possessed by the Seattle Seahawks, which I think means we’ll win a championship in 2014.

CONS

The “Timberwolves” writing doesn’t fit evenly with the “Minnesota” part and it’s driving me crazy. We should have changed our name to the Minnesota Teen Wolves. It would have fit better and we would all be naturally great at basketball until we decided to win on our own merits through the bonds of friendship with the fat kid from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

The green star kind of looks like a plutonium butthole. Wait, this was supposed to be in the PROS section.

Now that I realized the green star is a butthole, why is the wolf’s nose green too? Keep your nose where we can see it, Shep, you dirty old bastard!

It could have been worse. We could have ended up with a 1970s, clown-shoed, proto-Mumford & Sons meth addict:

Or the beer shits from this can of Milwaukee’s Best Light:

Or this Rubik’s cube made by Dan Issel on an Apple IIC after a long night at the disco:

Or this banana boner:

Jesus, Denver…get it together!

Next up we play the non-banana-boner Rockets in Houston and then that’s IT for the season. Stay tuned for periodic playoff/draft/trade updates during the summer and the inevitable “I SWEAR we’re going to be good this year” post. (Don’t underestimate Bjork’s crossover.)